Abstract
This personal, reflexive, ethnographic essay is written in the tradition of Black feminist anthropological and sociological women thinkers who call‐to‐the‐table
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educational systems and academic disciplines to name experiences and harms, center marginalized voices, and offer visions for transformation. I share two tales about having, or not, a seat at the table in the figurative and literal sense. I incorporate Langston Hughes’s poem,
I, Too
, an exposé about the irony of Black erasure in the America, to emphasize my statement about Black women’s (in)visibility in academia.
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Throughout my essay, I offer endnotes to substantiate claims about Black women’s rightful, yet oftentimes undervalued and sometimes abused, place in academia.
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I argue that we must demand a seat at academia’s decision‐making tables until a transformed space is actualized—because we, too, are academia.